Saturday, January 25, 2014

Chat with MnDOT Commissioner Charlie Zelle

Late last
year, I met with Charlie Zelle, Commissioner of the Minnesota Department of
Transportation to discuss options for potential state funding of bike share in
Greater Minnesota. After our discussion, Charlie agreed to a short interview
for minneapolize.

The
Commissioner is passionate about creating solutions for Minnesota that include
all modes of transportation and to improving pedestrian and cycling solutions
for greater safety and convenience.

Full
disclosure: I’ve served on a committee with Mr. Zelle for several years and we’ve
become (if distant) friends. This might explain the softball nature of the
questions. Still, even this short interview gives a good insight into how he intends
to lead the Department.

I’m told
that when he arrived at the job, he was told that he could acquire a new Chevy
Suburban – the past standard - as his work vehicle. He instead chose a Chevy
Volt (plug-in hybrid) as his daily driver. If you see a dark blue Volt with
white MnDOT graphics on the doors plying the streets and highways of the state,
wave hello to your Commissioner of Transportation.

The
interview begins with me in bold:

I understand when you went to a meeting
at Camp Ripley with your senior managers that you rode a bike part of the way,
can you talk about that decision and the experience?

It was a
great experience; I'll start there. I was amazed at the level of passion within
what has traditionally been viewed as a highway department, but it is a truly
multimodal transportation company and there are a number of people within the
agency who love riding a bike and some commute every day through the winter to
MnDOT. I'd committed to riding a bike to Camp Ripley, in February, when I was to
be the commissioner. It was when I actually did a Google search to see exactly
how far was that, and I realized it was like 140 miles so I said, “Can I take
the train part of the way?” So I took Northstar, and I said let's meet for
those who want to leave, we are leaving from Target Field at six in the
morning, and we're going to try to get to the managers meeting at Camp Ripley
that afternoon. And there were only two people waiting at the station and
so with me there were three. We headed out and then we met up with another
person, a woman at the Rogers stop. So now there's 4 of us. And we
rode, the four of us from Big Lake to St. Cloud, which was clearly the hardest for
me, part of the trip because these were really fit bike riders and they were not
very easy on the commissioner. We were averaging around 15 miles per hour and
then they started going 16 miles per hour, and then 17 miles per hour .

And
you're going 14 then 15.

We were at about 18
miles per hour on average, and I was about an inch behind one of the guys
wheels because I wanted every help I could get through drafting, and when he
was averaging 19 or 20 miles per hour, after about 20 miles I kind of said,
"Hey Guys? Be nice to your commissioner.” Someone said, “Oh, oh.
I didn't realize that”. By the time we got to St. Cloud, we met up
with another 10 people and along the way in Little Falls another 7 people so by
the time we rode into Camp Ripley there must have been 30 of us and it was
great. It was really great, a beautiful day.

How
did you get home?

There was a
group, maybe about half of them that rode home, I had a meeting that was an
excuse, I actually ended up getting a ride back. Next year, I'll try to
make it both ways. It's an annual meeting, it's not necessarily at Camp Ripley,
we have a managers meeting at least twice per year. All MnDot managers,
around 200 people, come together. This last meeting was in Eagan, it was after
a snowfall and I opened the meeting by saying I realized it was snowing so I
wasn't going to ride my bike, and there were two people that had just arrived
by bike so really we should be doing it year round.

Now, you took this job - you brought a
different kind of perspective from what we've seen in the past, in terms of
MnDOT being a highway department in the past and a transportation entity or
organization now and into the future. As you may know minneapolize is a
cycling advocacy blog - I'd like to get, in general, your view on cycling
in the Twin Cities but also around the state in terms of what you've seen.
What you're encouraged by, and what you're discouraged by.

Well first,
it has been really gratifying being part of the department of transportation
which came together in the 70's as a collection of a lot of different
transportation modes, and culturally they've been living in their own mode,
aeronautics, freight, railroad, ports. Highways and bridges dominate the
agency but it has been very exciting because I think we're pulling together
with one multi-modal vision, and that is that all these modes fit together.

In terms of
both passenger individual, and freight movements, I can't think of any trip
which we call peoples’ individual A-to-B story that doesn't involve going from
one mode to the next. You could walk to your car, that's still to me two
different ways. You might take a bus, which connects to a train which connects
to the park and ride and the idea behind an integrated vision state wide is
that we need to think as much about the connections as we do each individual
mode and biking/pedestrian is obviously a great interest of mine, but also a
tremendous connector of a lot of transit and even cars for employees traveling
to work.

It is just
part of this larger matrix of transportation and an increasingly vital one.
And I've been really surprised, delightfully surprised, that some of the
greatest passion for developing this inter-modal multi-modal bike and
pedestrian system is in Greater Minnesota. I've seen it in larger
regional centers and I've seen it in our smaller towns but what it says to me
is both that this is a generational shift, but also it's one where communities
are seeing the facts of the boost to their economy. It really is a true
economic development factor around making bicycle centers. Livability really
matters to communities, not just because it's nicer to live there but because
it attracts people and businesses.

So we see
MnDOT in our new vision, is to have a multi-modal system that maximizes the
health of individuals, the environment, and our economy so when we think about
that overriding vision for our agency, bicycles kind of fit right in to the
center of what we are, which is a system that helps support peoples lives as
opposed to frankly, sometimes it feeling the other way around.

So you're working currently for a
democratic governor in a democratic administration, I think it's safe to say
that cycling in the past has always been thought of as a progressive left wing
idea but in Indianapolis where they just built the 13 mile cultural corridor
which is a huge addition to the city and was very expensive. It was started and
promoted by a republican mayor.

What I've
been saying is transportation is generally bipartisan and is as much
generational as opposed to political. There is growing acceptance to each
individual mode and biking, as it's grabbed more mainstream attention, is not
just a nice recreation or exercise, but it's an affordable and environmentally
sound way of getting around. And I think there is a litmus test which is
having it embraced by as many businesses as a good (ed. Transportation) alternative.
And I think that, you know, we do have a democratic governor and I
certainly care about it personally, but I think it is here to stay. No
matter who is the administrating agency or government, because that's what
people want.

Lastly,
I'm very excited about the Mississippi River Trail. So many of the cross
country trips in the US seem to go from the west coast to the east coast, but I
would love to ride from Itasca down to New Orleans and right now so much of
that trail is on roadways some of which have wide shoulders, others which have
not so wide shoulders and will challenge even very confident cyclists as well
as those that would like to ride more if there was a safe place to do so,.
Do you envision, or would you like to see much or all of the MRT - even
nationwide - going to a dedicated non-motorized trail?

Oh I love
that, and I think it's good to keep an eye on that type of vision, and that's
it, you put your finger on the challenging part of developing a larger, even a
state wide system, is that there's always those gaps where there's no good
shoulder or pavement options, but having said that, transportation systems took
a while to be built and they take a longer time to evolve but unless we kind of
keep an eye on the goal we'll never get there. As we've seen over the
past 10 years a lot of those gaps have been filled. So I think that over
time particularly focusing on a few key corridors like the Mississippi river
trail and some others, we'll get there. But it's...

So maybe your next managers meeting
will be in New Orleans?

Do you want to lead
that trip Tony? I'll have to take a bus to start it off, I'll ride the
last 80 miles.

I promise to keep the speed at 12 miles
per hour. It's all down hill from here to New Orleans anyway right? Well thanks
very much.